Fund for Jewish Music History established at MIT’s Lewis Music Library

MIT Libraries is pleased to announce the creation of the Dr. Karl and Mrs. Margaret Grünbaum Fund for Jewish Music History at MIT’s Rosalind Denny Lewis Music Library. The fund was established with a gift from Michael Gruenbaum ’53 and his sister, the late Marietta Grünbaum Emont, in memory of their parents.

The Grünbaum family’s personal experiences with the Holocaust were at the heart of their decision to make the gift. Michael and Marietta’s father was killed in the Holocaust and they were imprisoned with their mother at the Terezin concentration camp. They later immigrated to the United States in 1950, at which point Michael enrolled at MIT. While at MIT, Michael worked part-time at the then newly-established music library with MIT’s first music librarian, Duscha Weisskopf, also a Holocaust survivor. Weisskopf spoke at MIT at a private dedication for the Fund earlier this summer.

Funded by Holocaust reparations received by the family, the Grünbaum Fund will enable important scores, recordings, video and written material by or about Jewish musicians, composers and writers to be purchased and shared with a new generation of students. Numerous materials have already been acquired and been made available to the Library’s users. The collection will continue to grow in the coming years and serve as a valuable intellectual asset for the MIT and Jewish communities.